


Mnemosyne

by Archedes



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Background Reaperana, Established Relationship, Flashbacks, Gen, M/M, Post-Recall, Reunions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 13:23:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14403033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Archedes/pseuds/Archedes
Summary: Years following the dissolution of Blackwatch, its ghosts are not quite finished with Jesse McCree and Genji Shimada.





	Mnemosyne

The blindfold is tight enough around McCree’s head to see stars, and the rope binding his wrist chafes something awful. The chair, at least, has a plush cushion, so his ass is the closest thing to comfortable out of every other part of him. All in all: not bad. He’d been in far worse situations back in Blackwatch, and he’s having little trouble staying positive about the situation. Talon hasn’t even started torturing him yet. In fact, after getting captured and tossed into this room, he has not seen hide nor hair of their operatives. Hell, he even manages to sneak in a nap, his chin tucked against his collarbone as he dozes in the chair. By the time he wakes up, he reckons a few hours or so have passed—and still, no one has come for him. Tilting his head to the side, his neck cracks—loud and satisfying. Then, licking his lips, he starts to whistle. Hopefully, whoever is on the other side of the cameras (that he knows are there) is a fan of “Sweet Home Alabama”.

McCree makes it two-thirds of the way through what he can remember of the song before the grate in the ceiling squeaks to the side, and a body drops in, landing lightly on the balls of his feet. “Took you long enough,” McCree says pleasantly, turning his face in the direction of the noise.

The blindfold is the first to drop away, and Genji slices through the bindings with his wakizashi. “Sorry. Winston instructed me to wait until someone came for you. …We did not predict that no one would.” He moves around in front of McCree and takes his hand between his, rubbing his wrist gently between his fingers and earning himself a sweet smile in return. Genji’s plated hands warm quickly, acclimating to McCree’s body heat. The gesture is more thoughtful than soothing to his sore skin, but McCree appreciates it all the same.

“Using me as bait? Winston’s taking to the commander thing quicker than I thought,” McCree comments as he stands and—reluctantly—pulls away from Genji. His serape and gun are gone—along with his prosthetic, leaving him more under-armed than he would have liked. Surprisingly, they had left the hat, and McCree adjusts it atop his head. Then he stretches, trying to limber himself up as best he can while Genji forces the door open and checks the hallway. It wouldn’t take long for Talon to realize they have an intruder. Time would not be on their side.

“Not precisely. He has picked up on a peculiar heat signature, and he thinks it is an agent who attacked him once before—the one who prompted him to trigger the recall,” Genji speaks in a hushed tone, his voice tinny from the faceplate. McCree comes up behind him, pressing a hand to the small of his back as he peers over his head. The hall is clear. Disturbingly so. It causes the skin on the back of McCree’s neck to prickle uncomfortably, suddenly intensely aware of the cameras. Someone is surely watching them, and yet…

“They took my shit. I’d like it back before we go.”

Genji tsks. “Very well. Wait here.”

“Sorry for the trouble, sweetheart,” McCree says wryly, placing a quick kiss on top of Genji’s head. His visor flickers, and he pokes McCree lightly on the nose. Then Genji is gone—off down the hallway—and McCree closes the door behind him.

Turning, he takes stock of the room. It’s rather barren, with the predicted two cameras in the top corners of the ceiling. McCree offers a genial hat-tip to them. There are mounted bookshelves on the walls, though all of the books have been removed. Talon has set up base in some sort of library. McCree sucks on his teeth and begins pacing. When Winston first sent them to poke around Dorado, it was under the impression that Talon did not yet have a presence there. “Bad luck,” McCree says to no one in particular as he circles back to the door. He opens it a crack and peeks outside, though Genji is nowhere in sight.

He had gotten nabbed a block away from the hotel he and Genji have been staying in. Apparently not even his civilian clothes or leaving his hat in the room could fool Talon, who seemed to know just where to find him. That, in itself, is not enough to fuck the mission per se (wired as he is, Genji need only follow the indicator on his display to find him). The lack of resistance _now_ worries McCree, far more than the kidnapping itself ever did.

Genji returns with his things. The exchange is wordless and anxious: Genji watching McCree reattach his arm while fidgeting restlessly with the shurikens in his arm. Sheathing and unsheathing them, each with a mechanical click that only agitates McCree further. When they leave, McCree takes the rear, Peacekeeper in hand and his forefinger curled tight around the trigger guard. The hallway stretches ahead of them, floors scuffed and cracked through years of neglect. The paisley wallpaper is peeling, revealing yellowed walls underneath, and McCree suspects that is the source of the piss-smell that permeates the air around them.

They turn a corner and encounter a pair of idle Talon operatives. Their lives leave them soundlessly, and they hit the ground with muted thuds—each with a shuriken lodged in their throats. Blood pools out from beneath their crumpled forms, and the two of them step carefully over them, Genji bumping his shoulder to McCree’s as they go. “Not completely abandoned, then,” McCree comments, more for his own sake than anything. He can’t shake the feeling of wrongness that had first hit him in that room, try as he may to dispel it with small talk and wry words.

“I am eager to be free of this place,” Genji confesses, voice low.

“You an’ me both.”

They descend into a tense silence, and they encounter no more of the enemy.

All is quiet as they move through the makeshift base. There are no alarms—not even silent ones that only machines and Genji would be able to pick up on. They make it all the way to the foyer without issue, and the hall opens out into a room that stretches up into the second story through a long, ovular hole in the ceiling. There are old computers and desks scattered about the first floor, with the second holding multitudes of books and reading tables. Abruptly, the air drops in temperature around them; Genji comments on it first, offhand, but it takes a few minutes more for McCree to really feel it. The hairs on his arm stand up as his skin breaks out in goosebumps. He rubs idly at it, his prosthetic somehow warm in comparison. It is only just warm enough for McCree not to see his breath. He tightens the serape around himself. Halfway through July, an old building like this should have been hotter than the devil’s own backyard.

Then it comes—a chill down his spine, tingling and unsettling—and McCree stops Genji with an arm to his chest, the metal of his plate armor humming against his skin. Someone is watching them. The feeling comes more strongly than before, and on precursory examination of the room, McCree had spotted no cameras. A shallow nod indicates that Genji has sensed it as well.

Taking the brim of his hat into his prosthetic hand, McCree slowly turns. Up on the second floor, standing just behind the peppered granite balustrade with arms dangling over the top, is a figure cloaked entirely in black save for the eerie white mask. With their face angled down, they observe the pair in silence, giving no sign of acknowledgement that they have been seen. The poor light—dusty, yellow, old—gleams wickedly over their taloned fingers.

“Evenin’,” McCree calls to them. “Ain’t you hot in that get-up?” Genji snorts, but most of the sound is eaten up by the faceplate.

No response comes, and the figure remains perfectly still—statuesque, like one of the gargoyles on the old church McCree’s ma used to take him to. Had they been dressed differently, McCree might have mistaken them for another fixture of the repurposed library. Genji brushes against his side, and McCree has to strain to hear his voice: “His heat signature matches the thermogram Winston forwarded to us prior to the mission.”

That wipes any humor clean off of McCree’s face. “You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Too cold to be anythin’ living.”

“Yes.”

“One of Talon’s little experiments, then,” McCree concludes grimly. All the while, the figure watches on. The door is just behind, carrying with it the sounds of cars and crowds. McCree reckons it’s about midday; he had been grabbed late last night. From within the library proper comes no noise at all. No mobilizing agents, no pursuit of the escaped prisoner. Nothing. Fucked from the start. Genji’s hand drifts to the hilt of his katana. He’s nervous, and that’s not like him. It sets McCree even more on edge, and he flexes his prosthetic fingers.

Stiffly, like some marionette working on rusted hinges, the figure tilts their head to the side. It reminds McCree of the owls who would come into his yard as a child, drawn by the gentle cooing of his mother’s mourning doves. Memories of home—before Deadlock—don’t come often. His mother would shout at them, waving a broom handle in the air, and all the owls would do—from the safety of their tree—is tilt their heads. Just like that. They would wait until his mother went inside, and then they would descend upon the coops, searching for weakness in the mesh wire.

“McCree,” Genji hisses, tearing him out of the memory.

“Yeah.” McCree can see his breath, now. “Let’s make for the door. Nice an’ easy.”

Without turning away from the figure, they back up towards the daylight. Even now, the black-clad person makes no attempt to stop the pair. Standing completely still, head cocked like an owl staring down at McCree’s mother as if not quite sure what she is trying to accomplish with her loud words and her piece of wood. McCree has Peacekeeper trained on that sweet spot between the slitted eyeholes of the mask.

When he was seven, he shot at one of the owls with his old BB gun. On a whim. No malice or anger behind it. A child wishing to see what would happen _if_. He knocked the head clean off, and it rolled a few feet away from the weeping stump of a neck. After finding the body, he made it halfway home before he started to vomit.

No movement. Nothing. Genji is tensed like a violin string, his backward steps measured and even. He is usually only this careful when there is something to be afraid of, and McCree takes note. When they finally reach the door, McCree can feel hard eyes—a dissecting gaze—on him as he yanks it open. It isn’t even locked. The stuffy July air hits him like a damp blanket, and when he looks up to the figure (he had only glanced away for a second), it is gone.

 

—

 

Back in the hotel room, McCree packs up while Genji touches base with Winston. He pads their suitcases with towels, complimentary soaps, and shampoos. Not even Genji’s armor case is free of the fruits of McCree’s pilfering. They hardly had time to unpack in the first place—in Dorado for a day at most before McCree got taken. It suggests that someone here, perhaps the masked man in the black cloak, had been expecting them. McCree can hear Genji relay that to Winston over their secure radio channel. Old school and analog, like what Deadlock used to use, to combat the high-tech hacker they have suitable reason to believe Talon employs.

Genji is undressed, wearing only a pair of McCree’s sweatpants that are a few sizes too large for him. They have little Chihuahuas printed on them—some are even wearing tiny cowboy hats. It makes McCree smile, even as Genji scowls, thoroughly displeased by whatever Winston is saying.

“He wants us back in Gibraltar immediately,” Genji says after disconnecting, sitting cross-legged in the center of the full-sized bed—too small for them, but McCree can’t bring himself to mind as he sits beside him, the mattress squeaking under the added weight.

“Figured.” McCree presses his lips to Genji’s bare shoulder, ghosting over the dip of one of the many broad scars lacing what is left of his old body.

Genji’s sour mood persists. “We accomplished nothing here.”

“Sure didn’t.” Genji turns and gives him a look—one not terribly unlike the looks he would give him back during the Blackwatch days. So McCree hastily adds: “This guy spooks Winston, that much is for sure. I can hardly blame him, too. I ain’t exactly eager to run into him again myself.”

“Were you afraid? In the library?” Genji is, for the moment, appeased, and he relaxes into McCree’s touch, even tilting his head to allow him to press a kiss to the underside of his synthetic jaw.

Then McCree exhales through his nose. When he shifts away to flop onto the bed, Genji turns to watch him, an eyebrow arched. “I was nervous,” McCree admits. “The way he acted—like he knew somethin’ we didn’t. Like he was lettin’ us go on a whim. Felt like he could stop us at any time, but for some reason he didn’t.”

Genji hums, picking lint off of his (McCree’s) dog-printed pajama pants. His chest is more streamlined now than it had been in the early days. Slick, soft synthetic weave covering the hard machinery of his prosthetics. Stark black against his pale skin, though the places where it meets his real flesh are no longer angry-red and inflamed as they had been. Beneath the pants are his legs—full prosthesis right up to the mid-thigh—and those are hard metal, meant for durability and utility rather than looks. There are prominent grooves, like scars, where his flex-armor slots into place over them. A man reinvented into a weapon at Overwatch’s convenience, sitting cross-legged on a shitty hotel bed in McCree’s Chihuahua pajamas.

Feeling full and warm, the words leave McCree before he has any time to think on them: “Darlin’, I love you. I really do.” Genji’s scarred face quirks into a small, surprised smile.

“Focus, Jesse.”

“Only if you give me a kiss first.”

Normally Genji would tease him first, make a game out of it that results with them both breathless, somebody pinned under the other. But McCree’s sudden declaration must have had an effect on him, because now he crawls over and leans down to press his lips against the corner of McCree’s mouth—something sweet and innocent that has McCree feeling full to burst. “You know I would not have let him hurt you,” Genji murmurs, still close, and McCree can feel his breath on his face.

“Really? Cause you seemed mighty nervous yourself, sweetheart.” That earns him a scowl and a shove as Genji pulls away. McCree laughs.

“I was not _nervous_. I was on guard. Winston’s report claimed he could be unpredictable with his movements.” Genji is as petulant as a child, pride wounded, and McCree wants nothing more than to needle him for another kiss.

A memory comes to McCree, unbidden. Genji and his pride. Back in Blackwatch, when Genji had been fully integrated into the organization, he used to get awful nightmares. Years later, Genji explained that they had to do with what his brother had done to him—reliving the pain of being cut to pieces, of being torn apart by a man with whom he had spent his entire childhood and then some. Some were about Overwatch putting him back together, about the nights spent alone in that sterile room with only the sound of his respirator to keep him company. At the time, McCree didn’t know any of that; only that the nightmares were enough to drive the standoffish, aggressive Genji into his bunk at night with the whispered threat that he would soundly disembowel McCree should he tell anyone. Sometimes, if the nightmares were particularly bad, Genji would even let McCree hold him. That was around the time when his childlike infatuation—drawn by Genji’s aura of danger and painfully indifferent disposition—had started to grow.

“What?” Genji asks, and McCree realizes he had been staring.

“Just thinkin’ about the old days. Sometimes I miss all your old disembowelin’ threats.”

Genji frowns. “…I did make a lot of those, didn’t I?”

Smiling, McCree sits up and kisses him, one hand at the back of his head where his fingers brush through his short black hair.

 

—

 

They get back to Gibraltar early in the morning, when the sun has just started to crest over the limestone cliffs. The base is peaceful, quiet in a way that it would not be come noontime when the bulk of the remaining occupants would awaken. There aren’t terribly many of them: definitely not enough to pose any sort of decisive threat to Talon, which is why they have been more or less left alone for so long. Aside from Winston, McCree, and Genji, Lena has come back, plus one girlfriend who likes to decorate the main building for each holiday. Awhile back, they picked up Mei-ling Zhao just outside of the Antarctic base. Zenyatta had come with Genji, and he and McCree get along well enough even if McCree still doesn’t quite know where his eyes are and therefore doesn’t quite know where to look when speaking with him. Reinhardt and Torbjörn showed up together one day with more luggage than the rest of them combined. Lúcio and Hana are the most recent—and most famous—additions.

Lena—bleary-eyed and half-asleep yet a fantastic flier all the same—is the one to pick them up and bring them home. McCree is certain that she dozed off at least once over the course of their flight, but they touch down on the in-base landing strip safely nonetheless.

“Good work, boys. I’m off to bed,” Lena mumbles as they get out of the small taildragger, and she leaves them to make their way back to their own rooms.

They go back to McCree’s, where Genji has already half-moved in, leaving his own room to Zenyatta (who has since gotten rid of the bed and turned the space into an impromptu meditation area). The ones who returned early—Lena, McCree, Genji, Reinhardt, Torbjörn—were given the old captain’s quarters. As if in a cruel stroke of irony or fate, McCree found himself saddled with Reyes’s room. Most of the former Blackwatch commander’s things had been long since removed, saved for the contents of a beat-up locker that sits in the corner of the room. Breaking the lock on it, McCree discovered old pictures—from the SEP days with Jack, from the early Strike Force days with Ana—and letters which he did not dare read out of some residual respect for the late Reyes. All of these things, McCree bundled up and stored in the top shelf of the locker which he promised never to touch again.

At the moment, the locker itself is covered up by an old quilt, and it is the first thing McCree and Genji see when they enter the room. McCree just can’t bring himself to get rid of it, so it stays and watches in silence as the two climb into bed and fall asleep.

Winston has Athena wake them up a scant three hours later for their debriefing. The meeting room is pleasantly air-conditioned and a welcome reprieve from the outside walk it takes to get there. All of the equipment within, however, is entirely out-of-date, with plasma monitors instead of the hologram projections that are currently in use and mechanical keyboards. The table is a long, rectangular slab of wood mottled with gouges and scratches—McCree wonders if Winston fished it out of the trash—and the chairs are folding, uncomfortable metal. However, at the front of the room is a breathtaking view of the ocean, and that almost makes up for the shabbiness.

Genji perches himself atop the table while McCree opts for a chair. Nearby, Winston shuffles around some large prints of the cloaked figure, taken by Athena’s cameras during Talon’s attack on the Watchpoint months past. Among them is an infrared thermogram, displaying the figure’s lower-than-normal body heat. “You’re sure it was him?” he asks without looking up.

“Yes. His heat signature matched perfectly,” Genji answers.

“And he just…let you two go?”

“Yep. All he did was cock his head and watch us leave before disappearin’ on us,” McCree says, lighting up a cigar and cracking an eye open in time to see Winston make a face.

“He was significantly more aggressive when I encountered him. Something is going on here.” Winston pauses for a moment, his eyes flicking to one of the ancient monitors. “…But I didn’t call you two here to rehash old news.” Carefully, mindful of the size of his fingers, he presses a key on one of the consoles. The plasma screen flickers to a blurred photograph of two masked figures, one cloaked in hooded blue and the other dressed in what looks like—to McCree’s eyes—a heavily padded motorcycle jacket. Where they are in the photo, McCree has no idea. Neither of them says a word.

“They go by ‘Shrike’ and ‘Soldier: 76’. These are from Cairo, taken about two months ago,” Winston explains, and he adjusts his glasses in the middle.

Something goes off in McCree’s head—a memory half-formed, struggling to rise amidst the other half-formed thoughts and musings. His brows knit together, but try as he may, he cannot chase it down, and it slips soundly between his fingers. Something terribly familiar. Something he had heard somewhere once before. Unmasked as he is, Genji does not appear similarly affected; if anything, he looks impatient for Winston to continue, tapping his prosthetic finger against his thigh. Shrike and Soldier: 76.

“What about ‘em?” McCree asks, threading his hand through his hair.

“They contacted me not long ago, while the two of you were still flying back from Mexico. They want to set up a meeting.” Winston is gauging their reactions, his yellow eyes narrowed just so.

“What do we know about them?” Genji, this time, unable to keep the restlessness from his voice. He still has the Chihuahua sweatpants on, the ends dusty where they drag along the floor as he walks.

“They’re vigilantes. Who they are; what they’re after? No idea. Shrike has a bounty on their head that rivals yours, McCree. But they seem interested in cooperating, and Overwatch needs all the help it can get. I want to send you two and Lena to meet with them—hear them out.”

“So, they’re criminals,” McCree points out lazily, flattening his hair on his head. It sticks back up immediately, but it gives him something to focus on while he tries to concentrate on that persistent niggling at the back of his mind. Shrike and Soldier: 76.

“Once upon a time, McCree, you were too. According to the media, you still are,” Winston says with an amused laugh that is not wholly dissimilar from Reinhardt’s. “They operate outside of the law. Right now? So do we. It can’t hurt to hear them out.”

McCree lifts his hands, palms out. “Hey, you’re the boss. When do you want us to head out?” The word ‘boss’ draws Genji’s attention to him, and he frowns. In truth, it had slipped out without McCree even noticing. He frowns back, the pair of them sharing a sudden unease that does not reach Winston.

“One week from now. They have a base just outside of Seville—their choice, of course, so make sure you’re armed. Though Athena managed to dig up old photos of them in operation before now, we cannot rule out the possibility that this is some sort of Talon ploy to lure us out or gain access to our ranks.”

Genji looks back to the monitors, squinting. “They’ve launched attacks on Talon contacts, haven’t they?” All the way across the room, Genji’s eyes can read the text as if it was right in front of him.

“Yes. Nothing directly _on_ Talon, but on their outside sources—yes. Still. Better safe than sorry.” Winston moves carefully alongside the table, a stack of papers in one hand—paw? McCree doesn’t know. Copies of what is currently displayed on the computers, McCree notices at once as he accepts his file from the ape. “You’re not Blackwatch anymore, so—please—keep Lena in the loop.”

“She ask you to tell us that?” McCree asks with a smirk. Genji has already hopped off the table and pulled the door open, eager to get back to bed judging by the annoyed look he shoots McCree’s way.

McCree takes his time. “…She did,” Winston divulges reluctantly. “Don’t tell her you know that, though. She’s happy to be going on a mission again and that would ruin it for her.”

“To be young again,” McCree says wistfully.

“ _Jesse_.” Genji at the door, glowering.

“I’m comin, sweetheart. Don’t you worry.”

 

—

 

A shrike is a small, savage bird with a carnivorous nature. Its claws lack the strength of any true bird of prey, and so it relies on killing via impaling its victims on sticks, thorns, barbed wire, and really anything sharp that is within a convenient distance. They are, in McCree’s experience, disarmingly cute and innocuous-looking. Appearance-wise, they are undeserving of their brutal reputation. Behavior-wise? It’s a bad day to be a frog when a shrike is feeling peckish. They are not swift killers, and often times their prey will wriggle and cry out as they bleed, as the contusions and trauma set in and slowly begin to sap the life from them. Small and deadly. An idea of what to expect of the person.

Soldier: 76 is more enigmatic, stirs up that half-formed remembering that—for the life of him—McCree cannot coax into living memory. Laying with Genji (sound asleep, tucked against McCree’s side, the sound of his respirator gentle as he breathes through his faceplate, arm draped across McCree’s midsection, fingers curled into the waistband of his pants), he finds himself staring at the locker. It does it often enough when he cannot sleep; he stares, and he thinks of Blackwatch. He thinks of Reyes and, sometimes, Moira too.

Reyes had killed three of his Deadlock brothers before taking him in, and McCree had only been spared by virtue of being a scrawny, filthy seventeen year old who looked about four years younger than he really was. McCree stops that particular memory in its tracks, forcing his eyes shut and the locker out of sight. Soldier: 76. Could it be the year he was born? That seems too easy—juvenile, even, and unfitting a man who looked to be at least 50 judging by the blurry photographs.

Genji and McCree run into one mask—dark and foreboding in an abandoned Talon base—and immediately two more want to meet with them. Trying to reconcile all of this information on three hours of sleep is enough to make McCree’s head hurt. So he turns towards Genji and presses his face into his hair, committed to forcing himself to sleep. Without waking, Genji wraps his arms tighter around him, his faceplate cool and pleasant against McCree’s bare collarbone. The locker looms like a statue behind him, and he is intensely aware of it—as he always is. It stands in silent judgement, but Reyes would have to wait for now.

**Author's Note:**

> \- [tumblr](http://elderhorror.tumblr.com/) & [twitter](https://twitter.com/malaguld)  
> \- thank you to [richy](http://just-r-i-k.tumblr.com/) for proofreading.  
> \- this will probably be a few chapters long. like maybe 5. who knows.


End file.
